Life is a banquet.
And the tragedy is that most people are starving to death.
See,
That's what I'm really talking about.
It's a nice story of some people on a raft off the course of Brazil who were perishing from thirst and they had no idea that the water they were floating on was fresh water.
See,
The river was coming out into the sea with such force that it went on for a couple of miles.
They had fresh water right there.
They had no idea of it.
So it's like we're surrounded with joy,
With happiness,
With love.
And most people have no idea whatsoever of this.
Reason.
They're brainwashed.
Reason.
They're hypnotized.
They're asleep.
Imagine a stage magician who hypnotizes someone and this person is seeing what isn't there and not seeing what is there.
That's what it's all about.
Repent.
Weak up.
And accept the good news.
Not weep for your sins.
What are you going to do weeping for your sins,
Which you committed in the first place because you were asleep anyway?
Are you going to cry because of what you did in your hypnotized state?
Why do you want to identify with that guy?
Wake up.
Wake up.
Put on a new mind.
Take on a new way of looking at things.
For the kingdom is here.
It's the rare Christian who takes that seriously.
The first thing you need to wake up is face the fact that you don't like being woken up.
You'd much rather have all of these things,
Which you were hypnotized into believing are so precious,
So important to you,
So important for your life and your survival.
Second,
Understand that maybe you've got the wrong ideas.
And it is these ideas that are influencing your life and making it the mess that it is and keeping you asleep.
Ideas about love,
Ideas about freedom,
Ideas about happiness,
Et cetera.
And it isn't easy to listen to someone who would challenge those ideas of yours that have come to be so precious to you.
You know,
They've made some interesting studies in brainwashing.
And they prove you're brainwashed when you take on,
When you introject an idea that isn't yours,
Somebody else's idea.
And the funny thing is that you'll be ready to die for it.
The first test that you've been brainwashed,
That you've got introjected convictions and beliefs,
Is that the moment they're attacked,
You feel stunned.
You react emotionally.
And you're even ready to die for an idea that never was yours.
The terrorist or the saint,
So-called,
Takes on an idea,
Swallows it whole,
And is ready to die for it.
Not easy to listen,
Especially when you get emotional about an idea.
And even when you don't get emotional about it,
Not easy to listen.
Because don't forget,
You're listening from your programming,
From your conditioning,
From your hypnotic state,
And you're frequently interpreting everything that's being said in terms of your hypnotic state,
Of your conditioning,
Of your programming.
We all have our positions,
Don't we?
And we listen from those positions.
The most difficult thing in the world to listen,
To see.
We don't want to see.
You think a rich man wants to look at poor people?
Because if you look,
You may change.
If you look,
You lose control of this life that you're so precariously holding together.
And so in order to wake up,
In order to awake,
The one thing you need the most is not energy or strength or even great intelligence.
The one thing you need the most of all is the readiness to learn something new.
